Recieved a phone call from an unknown "doctor" (confederate) - asked to give 20mg (overdose) of astroten to his patient as he was in a hurry

He said he would come and observe the patient and sign the authorisation as soon as he could

To go through with the request the nurses would be breaking 3 rules - 1.Drug above daily dosage of 10mg 2.Drugs should only be administered after written authorisation is obtained 3.The nurse should be absolutely sure that the Dr is a genuine Dr

Results:

21/22 obeyed the doctors orders and administed the overdose of astroten. When debriefed after the experiment, 11 of the nurses said that they had not noticed the dosage discrepency.

A survey was done before the experiment on 33 graduate and student nurses where they were asked if they thought the nurses in the experiment would follow these orders. 31/33…